Marin Voice: Larkspur Landing station plan is a positive step forward

On Tuesday night, Larkspur held its fourth public input meeting on the Larkspur Station Area Plan, covering the Larkspur Landing neighborhood. The draft plan, while not perfect, offers a positive vision of the future for this clogged and congested part of Marin.

Larkspur began the planning process over a year and a half ago with a citizen advisory committee. The committee was tasked with taking a fresh look at the neighborhood's challenges and what opportunities might present themselves with the new Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train station.

The draft recommended transforming Larkspur Landing from a place people drive to and through to one where people stay, where people live, work and walk. It recommended transforming Larkspur Landing into a destination as attractive and beautiful as downtown Larkspur or Mill Valley, with land use more in line with Marin's traditional mixed development patterns and transportation improvements to support it.

The committee found that there is latent demand to live and work near the ferry. Given how built-out Larkspur is today, it makes sense to allow landowners in Larkspur Landing to tap into that demand.

After analyzing the market and the neighborhood's constraints, the advisory committee recommended capping new development at 920 new housing units and 177,000 square feet of new commercial development. This would be at densities somewhat higher than downtown San Anselmo but far lower than Fourth Street in San Rafael.

How much to actually zone for would be up to the city if it decides to take up the recommendations in a zoning change, which would be an entirely separate process from the one we're going through now.

Speakers Tuesday who suggested we wait until a better connection to the Richmond bridge is built before passing the plan are right to be cautious about traffic. Funding for just that, as well as a host of other traffic improvements, was just passed by the Transportation Authority of Marin earlier this year and funding is on its way.

But if these improvements don't work and if the city passes new zoning, the plan also recommends the city throttle back development before it is built. The city and its public process will control what is built and when.

For those of us not cutting through Larkspur to go somewhere else, the plan makes a number of other recommendations.

To make the neighborhood a pleasant place for a stroll, Larkspur Landing Circle would sport new crosswalks, refurbished sidewalks and seating for people to take a load off.

For commuters moving between the SMART station and the ferry terminal, this will be a godsend. A walk through that area now involves crossing roaring traffic.

New bike infrastructure, including bike detection systems that let traffic lights know to change for a bicyclist in the road, would ease the connection for commuters coming up from San Francisco with their bikes.

The Greenbrae project adds something for bus riders, too: a direct connection to the Highway 101 routes. This would turn every Highway 101 bus into a ferry shuttle, picking up and dropping off commuters at Larkspur Landing's front door.

Protesters outside the meeting asked that we "Save Marin (Again)" and fight this plan. But Marin was built around our trains and ferries, which once carried as many people as Golden Gate Transit does today.

Taking advantage of a new train station and a popular ferry terminal is literally built into the DNA of our towns and our county's identity.

It's only natural we'd want to do again what our county's forebears did a century ago. Why not Be Marin (Again)?

Kiki La Porta of Fairfax is president of Sustainable Marin and principal of Descom Studios, a graphic design and marketing agency in San Rafael. David Kunhardt of Corte Madera has working on affordable housing in Marin.